Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category

“The information age is powered by thin fiber-optic cables buried in the sea bed, spreading between continents to connect the most remote corners of the planet. These great arteries account for practically all of our international web traffic, and each one has been logged by Washington research firm Telegeography in its interactive Submarine Cable Map 2014. The company’s research director Alan Mauldin told CNN about the world’s underwater networks. Click through the gallery to find out more.– Interview by Kieron Monks“

“It is hard not to read the obvious: Who would be more gobsmacked by the implications of social media—the prospect of everyone constantly talking to one another without an arbiter, mediator, or censor—than a citizen of the former Soviet Union? Likewise, who would see it as more revolutionary and valuable?

That is the singular insight that transformed Milner and through which he is transforming technology finance: It seemed worth more to him than to anybody else (at least anybody else with money).

In a way, he is to social media what Michael Milken in the mid-’80s was to many non-credit-worthy companies. Like Milken, Milner, in part through the lens of his own life’s experience, saw another level of value entirely—if the world was being transformed by social media, it was more valuable than anyone thought. And, too, if technology companies had reached a certain level of value, that was a pretty good indication of their permanence.

Accordingly, he upped the ante and put social media and himself at the center of technological development.

Indeed, there is a different or further mission. He’s more beholden, he’s more in awe, than the Silicon Valley establishment—blasè9 or cynical as any other establishment—is of its geniuses. There is always something vaguely oppositional about the relationship VCs have with the companies they invest in. They are trying to maximize their positions, to pay as little as possible and cash out for as much as possible. Milner—now the singular link between the major players of social media, Zuckerberg at Facebook, Mark Pincus at Zynga, Andrew Mason at Groupon, Jack Dorsey at Twitter, Daniel Ek at Spotify—is not thinking about individual deals but is aligning himself financially and strategically with the founders and reaping the benefits. Already, he competes with the topmost VCs in terms of personal wealth, and he is arguably now more important—Milner is setting the price.

Next year, in Scotland, Milner tells me, he will host a gathering of all the Internet companies in the world that have a valuation of more than $1 billion—he is setting the agenda, reordering the power structure.

In a sense, the elites of Silicon Valley have a good reason to be suspicious of Milner. He has stolen, or at least moved, the center of their world.”

“The whole event was documented, in secret, by the driver who was stopped. He was using OpenWatch, a mobile application that turns any Android phone or iPhone into a surreptitious recording device. The app’s creator, Rich Jones, a 23-year-old freelance mobile developer, says the goal of OpenWatch is to map the use and abuse of power by law enforcement officials throughout the country.

“By all of us together, creating data, we can get a real picture of how enforcement goes on in this country, and how it varies from region to region,” Jones told me, “and we can only do that if the people get involved.”

After OpenWatch records an interaction, lurking among the background processes on a mobile phone, it gives the user the option to upload the audio file to OpenWatch’s servers. Jones scours the uploads for posts of significance — he gets about 50 a day, he says — and, when something of interest comes through the transom, he cleans it of information identifying the citizen, then posts it online. An update to OpenWatch offers similar functionality for surreptitious recording of video.”

The result is the kind of curious inversion of surveillance society we’ve seen in other Internet-enabled activism, like HollaBack, the networked nonprofit fighting harassment of women on the street, or I Paid a Bribe, the Indian site for reporting instances where government officials demanded bribery. Persistent openness, the thinking goes, rewards good behavior as well as punishes bad actors.

Like this:

This may be a small change but has significant economic and logistical implcations. As a backgrounder to understanding the issue ,Wikipedia has a good overview of the web domain system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name and Uniform Resouce Locator ( URL ) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Resource_Locator

“One of the biggest changes in the history of the Internet could be set into motion Monday. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing remains open to fierce debate.

At a meeting in Singapore, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which oversees the Internet address system, is expected to approve a vast expansion of the range of addresses available. The group wants to make it possible for Internet users to create their own extensions like .com, .net or .org.

So, get ready for Web sites that end with the names of cities or brands, like .berlin or .canon, to name just two entities that have expressed interest in the proposed system. Crafty entrepreneurs are busy thinking up sites like iwant.beer or whatsfor.dinner.

Icann envisions hundreds of new extensions, and that is just in the first round of applications. The overall range of Internet addresses on offer would increase exponentially.”

Like this:

“Whether a repressive government, a buggy DNS server or a little old lady is behind your internet outage, it can’t be much fun, but the US government sympathizes with your plight if you’re dealing with reason number one. The New York Times reports that the US State Department will have spent upwards of $70 million on “shadow networks” which would allow protesters to communicate even if powers that be pull the traditional plug — so far, it’s spent at least $50 million on a independent cell phone network for Afghanistan, and given a $2 million grant to members of the New America Foundation creating the “internet in a suitcase”

Last we’d heard, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had pledged $25 million for just this sort of internet freedom, and the New America Foundation had applied for some of those bucks — see our more coverage links below — but it sounds like the money is flowing fast, and in multiple directions now.”

As much as this may seem trivial or offensive , any good tool used for good purposes is empowering and freeing. We have and are seeing the power of the Internet and social media in the Middle East in the Arab Spring uprisings. This “Internet in a suitcase ” would enable the voice of democracy and freedom via communication to occur in the case where a repressive government may wish to suppress the outflow of information. Knowledge is power and getting that knowledge out to the right people and to the greater global community keeps governments honest and the world informed . People do care but they need information to help them gather support and make timely and proper decisions.

Rare to have insight into the thoughts of such influential persons from the eG8….which ” assembled some of the greatest movers and shakes in media and the internet to debate government’s role in the web; but also essential notions of copyright protection, the internet’s importance to society, and how to foster innovation. Ideas gathered over the two days were then presented to the world’s leaders gathering at the G8 meeting in Deauville, from May 26. “